Golfing aids, such as GPS systems, laser range finders, and yardage books have been used in the past to assist a golfer in determining range and course characteristics for improving play. More recently, putting aids have been proposed to assist golfers in determining the slope of a green to establish an appropriate aim point for putting. Other systems have been proposed, based on putting green topography, to predict desired trajectories for a golf ball to take to fall into a golf cup. A number of patents and published applications exist which relate to such golfing aids, including U.S. Pat. No. 6,774,932; U.S. Pat. No. 6,296,579; U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,473; U.S. Pat. No. 6,165,083; U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,070; U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,557; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,403,001; all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety to the extent they are not inconsistent with the explicit teachings of this specification.
While the above-mentioned systems may provide the golfer with some information that may be useful for golfing, these devices may require measurements of topography be made by a golfer during play. In addition, such devices may not work on multi-sloped or non-uniformly sloped putting greens. Furthermore, information obtained from topology measurements may not be readily reducible for indicating a putting aim point or more detailed stroke information. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a method that provides more effective ways to utilize topology information to provide a golfer with highly detailed and useful surface, path, aiming, stroke, and alternate stroke information.
The present invention is designed to address these needs.